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We think of consciousness as a static thing. To Irian it was fluid, poured out in sparing doses that wavered in and out of existence, receding in waves as the fog fell again. He dreamed. When he was lucid in his dreams, he stored bits of information for later processing. He dreamed of aether circuits, branching pathways and aetheric theory surrounding him, recalling long-forgotten bits of class and the texts he had devoured. He saw clearly the answers to so many problems, and tried to file the information away, hoping it would still be there when he awoke.

Somewhere in the sea of dreams, he drifted, without a wind or a destination, just the sea and the mariner, lost without care. Occasionally a flash of consciousness would flit across the horizon, like a bruised and bleeding sunset, before it was gone again, and he and nothing sailed the seas of nowhere on a raft that wasn’t there.

Back in reality, the drugs they were using to keep him asleep were having unsettling results. He was still waking unpredictably, and he needed to stay still and unconscious to heal much of the damge that was done by aether exposure and beatings. He had apparently been pushing himself far too hard in the training area, and the fight with Hariel was the last straw. His body was in severe need of a break, but his physiology was so tough that even the tranquilizers that were steadily dripping into his lies weren’t fully keeping him down.

When they couldn’t get him to sleep, they had a student he knew come in and speak to him kindly, and he would settle down. A spike in the tranqs at the same time, and he would be knocked back out. The healers just hoped that they wouldn’t have to disable nerves to keep him down-there were always dangers to that approach, and paralysis was only one of them. And not even the worst, at that.